Abstract
Over the past several decades, operational forecasts of typhoon tracks
have improved steadily. However, storm surge forecast skills have
experienced rather modest improvements as it has been assumed to be
primarily a function of maximum typhoon wind speed. In this study,
numerical sensitivity experiments have been conducted for the
semi-enclosed Tokyo Bay to investigate the existence of any connection
between typhoon size and peak storm surge height. The radius of the
maximum wind (Rmax) derived based on the 50-kt wind radius (R50) is used
to define the size of a typhoon. The results show that peak storm surge
height tends to increase as the size of typhoon becomes larger, which
may also be supported by historical observations. Storm size plays a
significant role in surge generation, particularly for very large
typhoons making landfall in the upper bay. Analyses show that for a
given hypothetical typhoon, the water level in the inner bay is
increased by 1 m, changing Rmax from 13 km to 89 km. The findings of
this study will be beneficial for the storm surge modeling community as
it gives insight into the role of typhoon size, which is essential to
forecast peak surge height precisely.